Shuysters and Skinners (1845)

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

   Benjamin Zimmer's spottings of early attestations are always interesting.
His 1845 "shuyster" below is only the second example I have of this term being spelled with "-uy-."  The other example is from 1856, cited in Craigie-Hulbert's _Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles._

    As for where the 1845 passage first appeared, I doubt it was in a NYC newspaper.  The mainstream NYC press in 1845 wouldn't touch "shyster"  with the proverbial ten-foot pole.  Still, whoever produced the passage below was familiar both with the Tombs (NYC courthouse and jail) and with the "shysters"
(original meaning: lowlifes who ran a scam on the prisoners) being on the periphery of the legal profession.

    Evidently the writer of the passage below was generally familiar with the Tombs and the shysters but did not read Mike Walsh's _The Subterranean_, which by the fall of 1843 had fixed the spelling of "shyster" in its present form.
And Walsh, the courageous editor to whom we largely owe this term (he sharlply criticized the scam practiced against the prisoners) never spelled the term with -uy-.

   Also, btw, Mr. Van Witherem in the passage below is most likely a fictitious name, invented to add to the humor (based on the verb "wither," i.e., his words (humorously) had a withering effect on those he criticized; and -em = them.) Cf. the names in the modern (fictitious) lawfirm Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe.

Gerald Cohen
author, two monographs on the origin of the term "shyster"
(Barry Popik has since added some new material in article form,
but the basic picture on the origin of "shyster" still seems valid after these ca. 22 years.

        ***********

            Original message, from Benjamin Zimmer, June 6, 2005:
        <snip>-- coupled with our old friend "sh(u)yster", less than two years after its coinage:

> -----
> _Tioga Eagle_ (Wellsboro, Pa.), Feb. 26, 1845, p. 1, col. 3 "Festival of the Sucking Lawyers"
> ...
> Mr. Van Witherem rose to give as an irregular toast: 'The Shuysters and Skinners of the Tombs -- it is true they were the outsiders of the profession, but still as they hung to the _skirts_ of the regulars, and
> had been partakers of the _fleece_, he did not see how they could suffer such sharp practice to be _shorn_ of every _shred_ of the usual honors.'
> -- Here the president interposed and insisted that the Skinners and Shuysters had brought the profession into disgrace, and ought to be scratched out by a _bar_ sinister.
> -----
>
> There's no attribution given to this humorous piece, but it's possible that it was reprinted from a New York paper (the reference to "the Tombs" certainly suggests so).
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
>
>